In Continuum.

I love food, I really do. A lot of people disagree, they might think that my skinny build is the result of not liking food. Let's make it clear, once and for all, in regards to my relationship with food. I love eating good food, I love it when a food smells good and tastes even better. I enjoy a good dinner with fine delicacies, and the feeling of ecstasy in my mouth when I send a forkful of food into my mouth after an afternoon of unbearable hunger. Yes, I love food, but actually getting the food is oftentimes so troublesome that I put off the idea of eating altogether. You have to think about what food to get, where to get the food, how to get there in the first place. With a car, it is still troublesome to drive all the way to a place, find a parking lot, and then find the place itself. Eating alone is lonely, so you'd like someone to eat with you, if possible. But finding someone who is hungry and free at the same time is more difficult than it sounds. Someone could be as hungry as you, but haven't got the time to tear himself away from work. Then someone could be free right now, but he has eaten his lunch half an hour before you called. Eating with him staring at you is uncomfortable, so you resort to eating alone. Finding food involves a whole range of troubles that I am, admittedly, unwilling to dive into. 

That is also why I'd usually resort to starving myself, if getting food poses as a problem, or when the food close by are better off fed to the dogs. That was the case, for the most part, throughout my academic life. School food never really clicked very well with me, for some reason I found them to be extremely repulsive. High school was bad, because the food was practically made by people without tongues to taste their own food, or nostrils to take in the stench. To say that the food was not appetizing would be an under-statement, because it was really horrible. It'd be what a world class chef have nightmares about at night, I am sure, or what happens when you put a five year old in the kitchen, blindfolded. I tried it a couple of times, of course, until I resorted to just drinking soft drinks and water all day. Even the soft drinks sometimes tasted like water with sugar added, with no gas. They tasted like medicine,  and I would sometimes toss them right away into the trash. You might think that I am picky, and that I am wasteful. But seriously, if only you were there to drink those paper cups of terrors, you'd get me. It would have poisoned the rats in high dosage, I am very certain of that. 

Junior College was a little better, since I had the privilege of heading back home for lunch, if I so wished. Staying just three minutes away from school has its perks, though at the same time it could very well work against you. One of the perks would be that you could go home for a snack, a drink, a lunch, or a nap in between classes, and forgetting to bring something becomes a non-issue when you live that close. You are never late for classes either, in fact you can't even be late even if you want to. I leave my home at 7:15 in the morning and I could still reach right on time at 7:20, imagine that. Anyway, food wasn't exactly a problem back then, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the canteen was any better for the edibles. In fact, I think I've eaten less in Junior College than I ever did in high school, not because the food was worse but because I lost faith in school food. My main hangout was in the drinks store, because you can't really go wrong with drinks anywhere in the country, right? Then there was that vendor who recycled his ice every time after a student leaves them behind. I turned away from the drinks store, and that was the end of it all. 

I settled with just fishballs and crab sticks in primary school, and the occasional chicken wings. Even then, I didn't eat a whole lot, which explains my physical built now I suppose. I spent most of the time racing my friends to the canteen for no reasons at all, and then chasing other children on the fields and playing basketball. Food never came across as being very important, since it just tasted horrendous. Pathetic shreds of chicken on top of a small pile of half-cooked rice, fried with egg - and they called this chicken rice. Then there was the prawn noodle without prawns in it, just a bowl of warm brown liquid and yellow noodles inside. I remember my mother coming to school this one time and checked out just what I was eating, and she was positively appalled by it. She used to talk about how much it was of a chore to prepare her own lunch for school, until she saw what they were selling in school. Suddenly, waking up at five every morning to make lunch for herself wasn't such a bad thing after all. I've always, ever since then, envied those Japanese or Taiwanese school children, and those neat little trays of food they have in television shows and cartoons. I've never had those before, those small little aluminum tin cans with everything in them. I had bowls of warm brown liquid with yellow noodles. 

So anyway, it is inevitable to get hungry at night, and they always happen for the most trivial of reasons. You could be talking to your friends about the difference between a cupcake and a muffin, or you could be watching that dining table scene in Hook (oh, all those invisible food!). Typing the word "chocolate" could induce a strange craving for it, or you could be tempt by your siblings, like my sister, who is always making supper one way or another. Anyway, when that happens, the dilemma arises once more as to whether or not I should get down and dirty in the kitchen, or just give a fast food joint a phone call. Everything is so expensive, if you decide to have the food delivered to the doorstep, and you often think twice and trice before actually making that call. It's frustrating, at times, and a lot of restaurants and shops are closed, and made worse that you are usually hungry only after midnight. Friends would be sleeping at times, so calling them out for a supper at the neighborhood coffee shop would be out of the question. So you settle with little snacks at times, but they are only so gratifying after all. Midnight hungry attacks are agonizing to say the least, especially when your kitchen is filled mostly with uncooked food. I suppose when it comes to food, my laziness trumps hunger, any day. 

So I was thinking the other night, how nice it would be to be able to download food from the internet, through a BitTorrent program, you know? Craving for the penne alla arrabiata in the middle of the night? Log on to a website and start downloading, and you will see your penne alla arrabiata materialize in front of your computer. Of course, the speed of download depends on the seeding, but it sure beats going out of the way to get food. In fact, I don't even care if I have to pay for my downloads, just provide the damn service! I'd download so much food and then store them all in a virtual mini-fridge. There should be a social networking website for virtual food like that, called Foodbook or something, and it has a certain ring to it. What happens is that you could download the food you want onto this website, and store them there until you crave for them in the middle of the night. The food will never rot, never turn bad, and will always be in the best conditions when you need them. Friends could set up profiles and recommend nice food to eat in the wee hours of the night, and you could also share a dish online while chatting, as well. Yes, I am an entrepreneur, and proud of it. 

Still, you get the usual internet mumbo jumbo every once in a while. Maybe it isn't penne alla arrabiata, maybe the filename was misleading. Maybe it's really a plate of broccoli, and you have just downloaded a fake torrent. Or you could download ad-wares and spy-wares, and you'd have random "windows" popping up in your plate every once in a while. A miniature Macbook Air would pop out inside your penne alla arrabiata, telling you that you've just won the Macbook Air because you were the ten millionth customer, or something like that. Or imagine a penis popping out from your food, asking you if you'd like a penis enlargement. I dare you to finish that plate of food after that advertisement. Or you could download some kind of virus, and it could make you get sick and stuff like that. I am pretty sure people are going to start putting melamine viruses into downloadable food online as well, and that is going to cause a global epidemic. I suppose the idea of food torrents isn't such a great idea. But it is nice to think about such things, to distract yourself from the lack of food, I suppose. OK, now I am hungry.